CFP: [Theatre] Affectation from the Renaissance to today (Proposed Special Session for MLA, San Francisco 2008)

Affectation from the Renaissance to Today. (Proposed Special Session for MLA Annual Convention,San Francisco 2008.) What makes a person seem â€œaffectedâ€ rather than natural, and why should itmatter? Since the concept of affectation became current during the Renaissance (in part thanks totexts such as Castiglione's The Courtier) many playwrights, philosophers and novelists have tried tocodify and dramatize the difference between "affected" and spontaneous or natural behavior. Thisdistinction, however, is frequently blurred by the ambiguity of motives and gestures. Indeed, somemight argue that the effort to distinguish between truthful, heartfelt or natural feelings andsimulated or affected ones is doomed to failure. Yet these efforts and the difficulties they encounterarguably tell us a great deal about the particular historical and cultural moments in which theyoccur. The attempt to tell truth from falsehood is fraught with political, sexual, epistemological andontological anxiety, and is at the root of many aesthetic and moral debates from the sixteenthcentury onward. All genres, traditions, periods and approaches are welcome. 1-2-page abstracts or8-page papers by 1 March, 2008. Brad Buchanan (Buchanan_at_csus.edu)